I use the surfshark app on my phone, really it doesn’t do too much until you use bypasser to run it through the vpn directly.
I don’t know if I just didn’t notice but it’s just - not really doing anything.
Auto-reconnect: It doesn’t actually even auto-reconnect. It just buffers on a slow moving timer, and I have checked numerous times, it literally doesn’t try to reconnect. I have to stop it manually and start it manually. If it buffers, it also won’t connect. So I have to keep trying until it quickly zips to 50 then connects.
This occurs after kill switch kills the vpn “temporarily”, so it could be that as well. But I would quite like to keep kill switch.
CleanWeb - as far as I’ve noticed. For the mobile app, it’s not done anything, still as frequent ads, the same ads.
Probably a joining of both the VPN and CleanWeb,
Despite running an app through bypasser, ads within apps, literally just throw me my location - this is on a clean profile too, I wipe the app data and switch vpn location. First ad, insert sale for nearby markets with map. I know it’s different from a mock location.
Same with news that you get from the web - I start a fresh profile no data stored and I get local news on the home page. It’s not doing a whole lot except changing the language of my browser.
That’s the main issues I have with it on phone.
+I have one particular issue with it on computer, it works, yes, however, I cannot access anything.
I activate the VPN - and the web pages all switch to a grey error screen, like you’d get when you disconnect.
And for some games I’ve used it for, simply the game won’t even start when I try using the VPN at the same time.
So I don’t really know what I’m paying for unless I’m doing something very niche that just ruins the functionality of the VPN.
Hey, sorry to hear about the issues you’re experiencing with Surfshark. Jyrox provided some good suggestions like making sure no other VPN or antivirus software is conflicting with Surfshark and changing your DNS settings. You can also try changing the connection protocol in the VPN settings.
Regarding CleanWeb, it only blocks malicious ads and banners. Only CleanWeb 2.0 available on the browser extension version of our app blocks most ads including regular ones.
As for the issues on your desktop, changing the connection protocol and trying different servers should also help. However, if the issues remain after trying these steps, our support team could help out further. They can be reached at [email protected] or via live chat on our help center.
For mobile, it sounds like you have multiple DNS configs/filters and/or ad-blockers or VPN’s running concurrently. If you have custom DNS settings on your device (certainly for iOS), then the SurfShark app will hardly work at all.
I’d recommend clearing out any custom DNS configs, uninstalling all other DNS/VPN apps, and remove any other ad-blocker apps you may have also installed and try a fresh install of the SurfShark app. I have/had very similar issues when playing with the app on mobile.
For the desktop issues, I’d also make sure you’re on a clean browser profile with no other extensions/add-on’s and no custom DNS settings in-browser. For the gaming issues, that’s a known issue with almost all VPN’s as it conflicts with a lot of anti-cheat software and bot-detection systems (your physical location doesn’t match your game registration data) and the anti-cheat stuff has been known to run at the kernel level, automatically bypassing your VPN and telling the game that you’re spoofing your IP. Anti-cheat software is essentially straight-up spyware.
I can’t 100% confirm, but I believe it will conflict with Surfshark because it leverages Surfshark’s DNS to filter ad content (similar to AdGuard). However, if you have an alternate DNS config set up directly in device settings or running from another app, I’m fairly certain you get conflicts and sometimes to the point that none of your DNS profiles work. At least that’s been my experience with iOS. Almost all adblocking and VPN services advise against using multiple of these services at once.
As for the Off, Auto, & custom, I’m not sure because I wasn’t aware you could turn DNS off considering that’s how your device resolves website addresses.